


Grandchildren

by Seiya234



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Time!bbys!, grand!time!bbys!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been far too long since he had been a grandfather, the Doctor mused.</p><p>Perhaps it was time to change that.</p><p>Or, Alt!Seven is the grandfather to Ace's kids and everything is fluff and awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Infinite universes, infinite Doctors.

In one universe, Rose Tyler ended up standing on a beach in Norway with a metacrisis version of the Doctor she knew.

(and in that life, Rose loved him twice, once for the man he came from, and once for the man he became on his own)

In another, the Doctor still died his seventh death gunned down in front of his Tardis.

However, he was considerably older when it happened.

———————————————————————————————-

Ace had left his company when she was twenty five, zooming off on the Time Hopper that they had built together out of his motorbike and a vortex manipulator he happened to have lying around.

It was time for her to strike out on her own, he knew this, and of course he had given her a phone that she could get in touch with him (and, er, anyone in time and space really).

Still, the Tardis was rather lonely without her. And while normally he’d putter about on his own for a while before running into a new friend, at this time in this body….that didn’t feel quite right.

He drifted for a decade and three of Ace’s years when he got a call.

“Oi, professor, how do you feel about being a godfather?”

———————————————————————————

She eventually had three kids.

First, there was her oldest, who she had when she was still single….

—————————————————————————-

The organization Ace had set up, A Charitable Earth (he had arched an eyebrow at that and she chucked a bib at him), kept Ace constantly on the move across the globe.

When he landed a month after the baby was born

(he was aiming for two weeks before Ace was due but the Tardis had other plans. Or needed a tune up, it could be either honestly)

he found the two of them in a flat in 1997 Toronto.

Ace opened the door and immediately enveloped him in a hug, and they both pretended that the wetness on his shirt was a bit of snow melt from the gutters and not her sobbing into his shoulder.

When they pulled apart she gave him a dirty look.

“You’re still late Professor!”

In the back he could hear the snuffly sound that meant tears were about to erupt from a previously sleeping baby. Ace smiled, a little tiredly.

“Want to meet her?”

She led him into her bedroom, where she pulled her crying daughter out of a crib painted a very familiar blue, and placed her gently into the Doctor’s arms.

She was impossibly small, and he had her back asleep in ten seconds.

Ace looked at him, slightly wild eyed.

“You’re cheating.”

“What is her name?” the Doctor sidestepped instead.

“Manisha. Manisha Adeline McShane.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you…though I’ve been calling her Nisha.”

Nisha stirred again, waking up, but was content to look up at the Doctor.

“Nisha, say hello to-“ Ace paused for a second and looked away from the Doctor. Then she made herself look at the Doctor. “Say hello to your Grandpa…. If, if that’s…”

The Doctor, for once, was at a loss for words. Finally, he was able to say, “I would be honored, my Ace."


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a week since the Professor had come and he was….still there

Ace didn’t want to mention it and hurt his feelings, but she was honestly gobsmacked he had stayed still that long.

But he seemed content to putter around her flat, work on the TARDIS, and of course, be with Nisha. In fact, if she wasn’t in her arms, she was in his, whether he was reading a book, cooking, or taking naps on the couch that she made sure to get some stealth pictures of (as the Professor always indignantly insisted that he did not need such paltry things as naps.)

And considering that she was getting some sleep for the first time since Nisha was born, Ace certainly wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  
Still, when he came in the house kitted up in his jacket and umbrella (he had taken to leaving both off in the house), she wasn’t surprised.

“You off?” she said, willing her voice to stay calm. Who knew when she would see him again, but he had things to do, galaxies to save and empires to topple, just like her, and she was not going to cry like a big girl’s blouse, she was not….

“Yes, but I had a proposition for you before I did….”  
\--------------------------------------------------

It was a thought that had been pinging around in the back of his head since Ace had first called him. But it wasn’t until he went into the TARDIS to get a book (and perhaps check on a few things) that it came to the fore.

He was helped by the fact that instead of the library, he found himself in a fully kitted out nursery that the TARDIS had made.

He looked around at the little crib, the changing table, enough fluffy animals and onesies to outfit a whole gaggle of infants, a rocking chair that he remembered from when Susan was little-and how did She get that?- and a parcel load of diapers. She wanted to stay.

He scowled. “I can’t do this.”

The wall he was touching zapped him, and he got the sense of “don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m needed.”

The chair briefly rocked, as if to say, “So is Ace.”

He sagged against the doorframe, the centuries weighing on his brow. “We have to leave them, eventually.”

The lights flickered, and he got the feeling of “Yes, and?”

“They’ll age and die and-“ 

At this point, the TARDIS let him know that he needed to live in the moment, enjoy this precious gift, and not be an idiot by changing the rooms around him and turning upside down, so that he fell in the pool.

After he had gotten done sputtering and breathing water, and started to get out, he had to admit that She had a point.

And if he was going to be honest with himself, he wasn’t going to fight Her that hard on this.

He saw a lot in this incarnation, and he was aware, vaguely, of other versions of him. Some had driven Ace away, some didn't have Ace at all, and all of them were painfully lonely. It was a precious gift he had been given, that Ace had given him.

And it had been far, far, far too long since someone had called him Grandfather.

Perhaps it was time to take a break, stay in place.

Plans and schemes swirling in his head, he got out of the pool and sloshed to the wardrobe.  
\--------------------------------------------------  
“I think it’s time for me to….retire a bit. Live linearly.”

She didn’t want to breathe, she didn’t dare do so. Did he mean what she thought he meant?

But…she had to say it. “What about….” Words failed her (stupid hormones), so she settled for waving the hand that wasn’t holding Nisha about to indicate what she meant.

He smiled a bit sheepishly. “Well, I’d still need to leave for a week or two at a time. But there’s nothing that would keep me from coming back in between, keep our time lines in sync.”

Ace snorted. “Did you learn how to drive Her since I left you? Cos I kinda doubt that.”

He smiled slyly. “I think She’ll make sure I get back here everytime.”

He took her by her free hand and led her into the TARDIS, into the nursery, and then she couldn’t help it, she did start to cry a bit. 

Ace sat in the rocking chair, and the Doctor came over by her. “That is, of course, if you don’t mind a homeless old man coming to stay with you.”  
She swatted him on the shoulder. “Don’t be a berk, you do have a home with us.”

They stayed in silence for a second, Ace rocking Nisha back and forth, and the Professor content to stand near and watch.

Finally he spoke up. “Before I go….do you think Nisha is up for a small trip?”

She supposed now that she was a good girl and more importantly, a responsible adult, she should turn him down

What she did instead was turn her head to the ceiling and say “Yes, but something as safe as possible.”

The Professor scowled. “Of course.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to the driver.”


	3. Chapter 3

In the past week, the quiet little Toronto neighborhood where they lived had seen an attempted Orgon invasion, a lost tour group of Adipose, seven refugee Ood seeking Ace’s help, and the evacuation of Ace’s apartment building after something the Professor did to her coffee maker backfired-literally.

Ace took a small vindictive pleasure in seeing that Mr. Hardwicke, he of the small yappy dogs that woke Nisha up and snide comments on one’s lifestyle, had developed an eye twitch as a result of all the hubbub. However, it really wasn’t fair to the rest of her neighbors that she and the Professor (mainly the Professor) were such trouble magnets.

“I think we need to move,” she said when she got home that night.

The Doctor looked up from the book he was reading. He was lying out on the couch, three month old Nisha asleep on his chest. It was her favorite position, insofar as small infants could have such things. Ace thought it was because her daughter liked the sound of the Professor’s double heartbeats.

“I thought you would be saying that soon,” he said calmly, turning another page.

“Oh?” Fifteen year old Ace would have blown up at him for being a scheming, manipulative git. Thirty year old Ace had relaxed a bit, and more importantly, had discovered the joy of giving the Professor enough rope to hang himself with.

“Yes,” he said as he carefully got up, one hand holding Nisha, who was still fast asleep. “I have a house in Kent that I think would do nicely for the three of us.”

Acet thought about the Doctor she first met having a house. Her mind boggled, and then took a five minute break. “Where and when is it exactly?” she asked, picking up her rucksack and rifling through it for her keys.

The Professor looked up from where he was one handedly going through a dresser for socks and a onesie for Nisha. “It’s contemporaneous with us; Smithwood Manor, on Allen Road.”

“Good, I’ll meet you and Nisha there.” She left to the sound of him sputtering as she went to get on her cycle. Payback was sweet.

———————

Of course he beat her there, and even had Nisha calmed down from the inevitable tears that her cycle entering and exiting the Vortex caused.

(It wasn’t the sound, because the Doctor told her Nisha would start crying even when Ace landed a few blocks away and rode in from there. She had a nasty, half suspicion of what that could mean, but she would weasel it out of the Professor when Nisha got a little older.)

(Nisha didn’t have a problem with the Tardis, but comparing her cycle to the Tardis was like comparing a half blind old donkey to a new Lamborghini; they were operating on completely different levels.)

Ace wasn’t bothered though because she was busy looking around, Nisha in her arms, and she was in love.

Up until this moment she would have called herself a city girl; she liked the noise, the bustle, the crowds; reminders of all the places she had been with the Professor and places she had been on her own.

"Manors" seemed to her repressive, stuffy, unchanging, filled with those who stepped on and over people without a second thought, corrupt, evil…

(Another Nisha, and a manse burned to the ground by her hands, flashed through her mind)

But here was a big lawn for the TARDIS to land and for Nisha to run all over. There was a nice long driveway that she would not be popping wheelies with her cycle on because she was a responsible adult. And if that wasn’t a nice big workroom she saw peeking from the back, where she could work on a new nitro-9 formula….

This was a good place. This was a place where a centuries old alien, a time hopping aid worker, and a sentient blue box could raise a little girl.

She turned grinning to the Doctor and caught sight of the open doors of the TARDIS, with what looked like…..yes, her eyes did not deceive her, that was all of their belongings packed up in there.

She didn’t bother to look at Nisha to see if her daughter was older; she trusted the Doctor not to mess that up. But she did arch an eyebrow at him, and he had the grace to look slightly shamefaced.

“You were right, but you know this means you have diaper duty for a month,” she said.

The Professor nodded, and then offered her an arm. “Shall we look inside first before we unpack?”

She accepted and together the three of them walked into their new home.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m finally doing the Granddad!Seven fic! Well, less fic and more lots of drabbles but I’m doing it! Shout out to whatthefoucault and zagreus-taking-time-apart on tumblr for their posts that inspired this


End file.
